Witch's Canyon

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  "How are all these people supposed to get home?" Sam asked. "Are the roads open again?"

  "Not so's I know. We're just hoping they will be by the time people start to leave."

  "There's a lot of wishful thinking going on around here," Sam observed.

  "You don't know Mayor Milner like I do," Beckett said. "He's the king of wishful thinking. It's gotten him this far—mayor of a little mountain town—so he thinks it's the most powerful force on Earth. I don't think he's ever had a real setback. I recognize that he could have one today, if we end up with a few thousand people stuck in Cedar Wells because paranormal murderers don't want them to leave." His face broke into a wry smile that vanished just as fast.

  "And I know how nuts that sounds. But it's what you believe, right?"

  "I don't just believe it," Sam said. "I know it. I even know why. That's why we think maybe we can end it."

  "If wishful thinking has any power at all, I'm wishing you fellows can."

  "If not..." Sam shook his bag so the sheriff could hear the contents clanking together. "If not, then we're going to have a real mess on our hands."

  Kid's right, Jim Beckett thought. If there was an attack on the mall—even by a single one of those ghost killers or whatever they were—the ensuing panic would do a lot more damage than the ghosts. He had covered this with his deputies, and they were all ready to do whatever they could to keep order, but the fact was that a crowd of even a thousand or two could be plenty destructive.

  The plan was to isolate the ghost and divide the shoppers into manageable chunks by closing off sections of the mall. It was arranged in great hallways off the center court, so it could easily be chopped into three parts. Smaller groups could be reasoned with more easily than big ones.

  That was the hope, at any rate. How it would work in reality, Beckett wasn't sure. During his years as sheriff, he'd never had to deal with such a large group of people. He doubted if any law officer had ever dealt with this precise situation.

  One thing he knew for sure: When this was all over, if he walked away from it, he wouldn't be writing it up for any law enforcement publications or talking about it at conventions. Not only would it be unbelievable to anyone who hadn't lived through it, but he wasn't particularly proud of his performance. He had let the politicians—Mayor Milner, to be precise—walk all over him. He, not the mayor, was responsible for securing the public's safety, and he had let the mayor handcuff him.

  Just a couple of minutes ago, before the kid had interrupted, it was happening again. He'd found himself agreeing to keep a low profile and to do everything possible to allow the mall opening to go ahead as planned. Milner and Carla Krug were still locked in intense conversation—the mayor no doubt arguing for a greater role in the festivities than had been agreed on, now that he saw a fair-sized crowd had gathered.

  Maybe Beckett could reclaim some of his self-esteem after all. He stalked back to the pair of them, bureaucrats from public and private sectors, with determination settling in his gut like a hearty breakfast. They broke off, mid-sentence, at his approach.

  "I want to make one thing clear," he said, not waiting for an invitation to speak. "If there's one sign—I mean, a single solitary shred of likelihood that one of those things is on the way—this whole place is mine."

  "Meaning what, Jim?" Carla asked.

  "Meaning it's a crime scene and I control it. Not you or Mayor Milner or your security people. Me. Is that clear?"

  "Now, Jim," Milner said, in that conciliatory tone he took that made it sound as if he was trying to calm a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. Beckett had to resist the impulse to smack him one. Maybe before the day was out, he'd get a chance. "Let's get down off that high horse, okay? We're all together on this thing."

  "I don't think we are, Donald. In spite of everything that's happened, bodies piled up like cordwood around town, I don't think you have quite grasped what we're dealing with here. This isn't something you can make go away by spreading some favors around. And if there's a chance of a panic that might cost lives, I'm taking over. No argument, end of story."

  "Believe me, Jim," Carla said. "The last thing I want is a panic. I just want to know that if the worst doesn't happen, that your people won't be out there stirring things up."

  "I don't think you need to worry about my people," Beckett said. "How many of the store employees here live in Cedar Wells? Probably most of them. The ones who don't, who we had to keep here in town last night, will be complaining about that, and the ones who do will be talking about the murders. All it'll take is for a few customers to hear the wrong thing. You remember the game of telephone? Someone whispers something in the first person's ear, and by the time it makes the whole circle it's transformed into something else entirely? With all the people in this building, you're going to have one hell of a telephone game going on, and it might not even take an attack to set off a panic. So this is how it's going to be, and if you don't like it, I don't particularly care. In the event of any sort of incident, your security people will look to me and my people for guidance. I'd like to meet with Lynnette again and make sure she understands this. I want to know that she has transmitted the instructions to her crew. What I don't want is for even one of those security guards to do the wrong thing when I'm trying to restore order. Is that all clear?"

  Mayor Milner looked like he wanted to complain, to throw his weight around. But he clamped his lips together so tightly they almost disappeared and nodded his head gravely.

  Carla watched his reaction, then gave in, too. "I'll get Lynnette for you," she said. "Why don't you meet her in the security office so you can talk about the specifics without being overheard?"

  "That's a good idea," Beckett said. "I'll see her there directly."

  Sam made a quick tour of the mall's interior, eyes open for anyone who looked out of place or antique, or who was flickering the way the spirits did. Although they were inside, everywhere he went people were bundled up in coats and hats and scarves, the coats open, scarves worn loosely about the neck, hats sometimes stuck into pockets. The crowds milled around the shop windows as if they couldn't wait to get inside and start spending money. Sam saw a few things he wouldn't mind picking up either. He wasn't a materialistic guy—Dad had raised them both with a disdain for people who let their possessions rule or define them—but that didn't mean he couldn't use a new jacket or sweatshirt or pair of boots from time to time. If he'd made it through law school, he probably could have brought down a healthy salary. Now he got by on Dean's credit card scams and justified it by knowing that society as a whole was better off because hunters were out there killing the bad things.

  The food court already smelled like pizza and sweet and sour chicken and cheeseburgers and fries. It had been hours since he'd eaten anything, and the aromas made his stomach grumble. Some people already stood in line, and the counter workers bantered with them, although no one was selling until the official ribbon cutting.

  He glanced at a clock on the wall behind the counter of the taco stand: 11:54. Not much longer now.

  And he still had plenty of ground to cover in here before he checked the outside. He picked up the pace.

  His hunger could wait.

  THIRTY-THREE

  "Dude, you do know where the witch's cabin was, right?" Dean asked. They had passed the old schoolhouse a while ago. The snow had drifted deeper here, and Dean's boots and jeans were soaked through.

  "'Course I do," Harmon Baird replied. "We kept away from it, even though she'd been dead and gone long before I was born. Sometimes the older kids would try to convince us to go inside. I did once, about three steps inside the door, before I turned around and ran out again. Lucky I didn't wet my drawers just out of general principle."

  "And this is the best way to get there?"

  "Hell, all I know, there's a road right to it now. Might be a high-rise apartment complex built on top of it, too. Ain't a place I've been back to since I was a tyke. Or wanted to go back to."
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  Dean didn't respond. He couldn't have been polite. This guy was old, sure, but most of the time he seemed relatively coherent. Since he had known they were looking for some unnatural evil, he might have mentioned this witch house sooner. The certainty that people had died while Baird was playing Lone Ranger in the woods, or traipsing around with him and Sam once they found him, made Dean physically sick. Being an amateur hunter was fine if you took the task seriously. Letting people be killed because of your absentmindedness did not fit that description.

  There was an undeniable beauty to the landscape out here. Something Sam would probably have appreciated more, since admiring scenery wasn't high on his own list of hobbies. The whitish-yellow canyon walls rose around them as the valley floor sank. The fields were snow-covered but with pale yellow-brown grasses poking out, and every now and then a gnarled, twisted tree whose branches were weighted down with the white stuff tried to stand up. The scene would have been peaceful, except that as they trudged along, more and more wildlife started showing up. Ravens and doves, gray-backed with black spots and pale-breasted, stood on the branches or on the ground, watching them. Gray squirrels, with tails less bushy than some he'd seen in cities, joined the birds. Brown coyotes, like scraggly dogs, stood beside animals they would happily eat under other circumstances. A couple of deer showed up a little after that, including one stag with an impressive rack. Three bighorn sheep came next, stepping gracefully out of the rocky canyon wall. Rats and mice and snakes—snakes, in the snow—emerged from underneath the layer of white. Before long there must have been fifty pairs of eyes gazing at them. More.

  Seeing the animals out there, watching them but apparently not spooked by them, was strange enough.

  Stranger still was the fact that the animals seemed to track their progress, following along like the gallery at a golf tournament.

  "You ever see anything like that?" Dean asked finally, nodding toward the woodland creatures.

  "Seen all of 'em, one time or another," Baird replied. "Just not all together like this. Like they're here for some kind of party or barn dance."

  "That's what I was afraid of. You think they're real or you think they came from the witch?"

  "I thought witches had black cats."

  "There's a lot more to witches than that," Dean said, still impatient with the geezer. "If they attack, we could use up a lot of ammo fighting 'em off. Leave us vulnerable later on when we get to the witch's house. How much farther?"

  "Not too much," Baird said. "I think."

  "You think. That's encouraging. I feel a lot better now."

  "You coulda just bought a map from Mr. Rand McNally," Baird shot back.

  "Maybe I should have."

  The fine hairs on the back of Dean's neck were standing up. All those little eyes staring at him—it was like the usual sensation of being watched, but multiplied and made weirder by the fact that the eyes weren't human.

  There seemed to be a sort of intelligence operating there just the same. At least, they weren't behaving like wild creatures, which would have run at the sight of the two humans, and which would not have hung around together like old friends. Real animals would have made some kind of sounds, too, but these were utterly silent.

  Dean knew his shotgun was loaded, and he resisted the impulse to check it. The air seemed fraught with menace, as if the attack would come any time. He didn't want to take his attention away from the renegade petting zoo for a second.

  "We could shoot first," Baird said after a few minutes. "See if we can spook 'em."

  "They've got me plenty spooked," Dean replied. He kept hoping the explanation was something else—that they were responding to an impending earthquake or other, more natural, disaster. He had stuffed plenty of rock salt shells into his pockets, but they were for dealing with the witch and maybe a handful of guards. And he couldn't exactly dash to the car for more, since it was at the mall.

  The birds came at them first.

  One moment they were standing with the others on the ground, and the next—with no signal Dean could identify—they were in flight, wings beating at the air, silently screeching their bird cries and headed right for the two of them.

  Dean snatched a couple of shells from his pocket and tore them open, pouring rock salt on the snow, forming a circle around himself and the old man. He had a plastic bag of salt, but that was for the witch's bones. "Stay inside this circle," he said. "No matter what." He tore open one more shell and kept pouring. The salt melted the snow's crust but he was able to make a solid circle around them, about three feet in diameter.

  He finished it just in time. The ravens flew fastest, their big black wings flapping steadily and hard, and the birds dove at them with claws extended, beaks ready to gash and cut. But when they hit the line above the circle in the snow, they fell away, flapping madly to remain airborne. The doves—no geniuses, those, Dean noted—did the exact same thing a few seconds later.

  By this time the other animals were on the advance, too. The deer and bighorn sheep thundered across the ground. In their wake came squirrels, skunks, raccoons, ringtails. Behind them, rats and mice and snakes.

  First of the mammals to reach the circle was the buck with the big antlers. He lowered them on the charge and sprang toward them, but when he hit the invisible wall of the circle, he staggered back as if electrocuted. He flashed black light, flickered, fell into the snow looking like a ranch hand who might have been from Harmon Baird's era, then transformed back into a deer and pranced away from the circle, staggering a little, like he'd downed a few too many tallboys.

  "He's smart enough to be scared," Dean said.

  "He oughta be," Baird said. "That's my pa."

  Two of the bighorn sheep did the same thing, in tandem—rushing the circle, then falling back with silent squeals of alarm.

  "Your father died on the ranch?" Dean asked.

  "I told you that."

  "That's right, you did." Dean felt bad about his tone just then. For a change, the old coot hadn't been withholding information; Dean had simply forgotten what Baird had told him.

  "I gotta get to him," Baird said. "He looks hurt."

  Dean caught the old man's coat just before he broke the circle and dragged him back in. The man, surprisingly strong, fought him. Dean held on, though, drawing him back an inch at a time. Finally, Baird stopped struggling against him.

  "That's not your dad," Dean said. "Not anymore. Believe me, I know what it's like to want to be there for him. But your dad's dead. A long long time now. What did you say got him? A tomahawk?"

  "Split his back clean open."

  "See? That's just a spirit that takes his shape sometimes, but it's not really him. He's under the witch's influence. We get to her, then you'll be able to give your dad some rest. If you break the circle, though, those animals will tear us both apart and we'll never make it."

  Harmon Baird stood, breathing hard, his jaw defiant. But as Dean spoke, his eyes softened and he let his mouth drop open, blew out a breath. "How we going to get to her?"

  The animals had completely surrounded the salt circle, some of them testing its integrity from time to time. The birds flew rings around it, just outside its perimeter. Dean could smell them all now, erasing the clean, fresh aroma of the snow-filled valley.

  "Yeah, I haven't figured that out yet."

  "Looks like you better get to it pretty soon."

  "I know that!" Dean snapped. "I know people are dying. My brother's at that mall, and he's in danger, too. I'm not an idiot, you know."

  Baird just smiled at him. He nodded toward the ground. "I just mean the snow's melting a little under the salt," he said. "You made a nice neat ring, but if it don't all melt exactly evenly, then some of that salt could shift or slide. That happens, your circle ain't so neat. What happens then?"

  "Oh," Dean said. "Sorry. If that happens, then I guess Bambi and friends eat us up."

  THIRTY-FOUR

  "Sam?"

  He turned at the voice. Hea
ther Panolli came toward him, wearing a fake fur coat and snug jeans, her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She looked fresh-faced and very young. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again," she said. "Where's Dean?" When she came closer, a wave of vaguely floral perfume washed over him.

  "He's... somewhere else, trying to bring a final end to the whole... situation we talked about," Sam said. "What are you doing here?"

  "Are you kidding? It's a mall!"

  "I know, but... it's not exactly safe around here yet. And I don't know how much intelligence the... the murderers have, but if they have much at all they'll realize what a prime target this mall is today. You shouldn't be here."

  "From what I hear, no place is much safer than any other," she said. "Besides, my boyfriend Todd got a job here." She pointed to a chain bookstore. "In there."

  "Todd with long dark hair?"

  "That's right. Do you know him?"

  Apparently he hadn't told Heather about their encounter, even though he'd promised that he would.

  "We've met," Sam said. "It might be better if he doesn't see you talking to me."

  "Why?"

  "He can explain. Let's just leave it at that." If that didn't force the issue, then he didn't know what would.

  She didn't follow up on it. "So you think I should be on the lookout for any bow-and-arrow wielding Indians?"

  Sam nodded. "Among other things."

  "What's in your bag?" she asked. "Is it guns?"

  "Heather, listen—"

  "You can tell me, Sam. I won't blab."

  Like you kept your dad's big secret so well, he thought. He was glad she hadn't—although it turned out to be a blind alley, you never knew in this kind of case which information might be invaluable. But that didn't mean he wanted to trust her with any of his own.

  "Heather, I need to keep going. I'm trying to cover a lot of ground here, and there's not much time."